The Kingdom That Will Never Be Destroyed, 34th Tuesday (I), November 23, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of Blessed Miguel Pro, St. Clement and St. Columban
November 23, 2021
Dan 2:31-45, Dan 3:47-61, Lk 21:5-11

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In this week in which we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, we have a chance to think about the distinct nature of his kingdom and how to enter it. It is a time to allow Christ our King to destroy false allegiances to earthly notions and to learn from him how to become a kingdom of priests offering sacrifices to God the Father.  Today’s readings help us to do just that, examining the foundations and goals of our life by inserting us more consciously within world and salvation history.
• In the first reading, we have the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, which none of his magicians, sorcerers, or others could interpret. Nebuchadnezzar didn’t reveal what he had seen. God had nevertheless revealed the dream to Daniel as well as its interpretation and so Daniel asked to be introduced into the king’s presence to interpret properly the dream. The king saw a large and bright statue with a head of pure gold, the torso silver, the belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron and the feet partly iron and partly clay. At the end of the dream the king saw a stone that was thrown from a mountain without a hand that rendered the entire statue to dust. Daniel said that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was the gold head. He would be surpassed by the Persians (the silver torso), who themselves would be defeated by the Greeks (bronze belly and thighs). The Romans (iron legs) would come next, as strong as iron, but eventually their kingdom would have some weaknesses (feet half of clay). The stone that would come from above to pulverize the Romans would be the “stone rejected by the builders,” Christ himself, the Cornerstone. That’s what we celebrate during this week of Christ the King. Christ didn’t establish an earthly kingdom — his kingdom is not of this world — but the kingdom he did establish is the everlasting one that will know no end. But we know that there are three different spiritual interpretations of Sacred Scripture: the Christological (how it points to Jesus, or typological), moral (how it relates to us and our behavior) and anagogical (how it relates to the last things). The moral application would for us to recognize that if we have feet of clay, no matter how strong we are in other parts of our life, everything can come down. We need to look to our foundation. More on this soon.
• In the Gospel, we also see predicted destruction. Jesus describes how the temple itself would be destroyed such that “there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” That’s because for many Jews the Temple had become an idol. Rather than a place of true encounter with God, they, as we saw at the end of last week, had perverted it to a den of thieves. They were not willing to grasp that that Temple was provisional until Christ the true Temple, the Messiah, came. Their foundation was built on the temple rather than on the God worshipped in the Temple. We can similarly have our own religious idols that rather than bringing us to God take us away. There are Catholics who if their Church is closed, sadly stop practicing the faith, as if the Church building, rather than God himself who dwells within the Church, is really the most important thing of all. Others make the liturgy an idol, treating the most minute change of a rubric by the Pope as if it’s cold-blooded murder and exalting the sign over the signified to such a degree that there are some Catholics who refuse to accept, for example, the new order of the Mass 52 years after its going into force. There are others who hold on to an idol image of Jesus — either as a warm indulgent teddy bear on the one hand or a fiery vengeance taking condemner on the other — that cannot be changed or even nuanced by God himself in prayer or through the Church. Jesus wants to smash all our idols so that he can help us build our entire lives on a firm foundation.
• And what is that foundation? We see it in St. Matthew’s parallel version of today’s Gospel. After he describes what will happen at the end of time he says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” He wants us to build our lives on his word as the foundation of rock — what he describes at the end of the Sermon on the Mount — that will keep us secure even when the earthquakes, wars, insurrections, famines and plagues happen. He wants us to build ourselves on the stone rejected by the builders who has become the cornerstone.
• The saints, of course, are those who are exemplary for us in doing so and today we’re blessed with three.
• The first is Blessed Miguel Pro. His story is one of the most powerful for me in hagiography. In 1910, there was a revolution in Mexico against the “old order” and one of the first results was anti-clerical persecution based on a militant atheism. Religious orders were banned. Many priests, brothers and nuns needed to flee across the border into the United States. Churches, monasteries, convents and other religious buildings were confiscated by the State. To survive, the Church needed to go underground. Many Catholic priests, at the risk of their lives, donned various disguises to try to bring the sacraments to those who were dying, to celebrate Mass and confessions in people’s homes, to teach the catechism to young children, to attend to the needs of the poor and destitute, and to care for the many orphans the government was making by the summary executions of parents. Fr. Miguel was a thirty-six year-old Jesuit priest who used his younger brother’s bicycle to crisscross the city, doing all of these things and more. He was eventually identified as a cleric and a warrant was issued for his arrest. For almost a year he evaded the authorities so that he could continue his priestly ministrations, but he knew that eventually he would be caught and killed. 94 years ago today, November 23, 1927, Fr. Miguel was arrested and sentenced to death by the Mexican dictator, Plutarco Calles, without a trial. Calles wanted to use Fr. Pro as an example, to teach other clandestine Catholic priests and the Catholic faithful who sought their pastoral care what would happen to those who continued to try to practice the Catholic faith in defiance of the government’s dictates. He wanted to be the one to crush all other supposed empires, including the kingdom of Christ. So Calles sent out his henchmen to assemble a crowd and photograph the event. They crowd gathered and Fr. Miguel Pro was brought before the firing squad. He was asked if he had any dying wishes. He requested two minutes to pray. After he was done, he stood up and said to those who were about to end his life, “May God have mercy on you. May God bless you.” Then he turned to the one who would give him his life back and said, “You know, O Lord, that I am innocent. With all my heart I forgive my enemies.” As the firing squad raised their rifles and took aim, in a firm, clear voice, Fr. Miguel Pro said his last words, “Viva Cristo Rey!” — “Long live Christ the King!” “Viva Cristo Rey!” Those words began to echo throughout Mexico. The photographs of the execution, taken at Calles’ instigation to terrify Christians, emboldened them. The photographs spread so fast as a witness to Pro’s faith and Calles’ brutality that the dictator soon banned their publication and use. But it was too late. The following day about ten thousand Mexicans, at the risk of their lives, accompanied Fr. Pro’s body to Dolores Cemetery. They had learned from him how to build their lives on Christ the Rock and they were willing to risk death to do so, courageously followed Pro’s remains. The cortège diverted itself by the Dictator’s home so that they could be sure he saw it, and as they processed, the Mexicans echoed the message Pro preached so effectively in life and in death: “Viva Cristo Rey! Viva Cristo Rey!” These ordinary Christians, and the valiant priest they had come to honor, were all giving witness to a truth that no amount of firing squads could kill: the truth that there is a God, that that God sent his Son into the World, and that he, their Creator and Redeemer, is Lord and King of all and worth their very lives. They were proclaiming their faith in a kingdom that would have no end, even when earthly kingdoms tried to kill it with a firing squad.
• The second example is St. Clement, the fourth Pope, whom the Church likewise celebrates today. He seems to have been a slave early in life who heard the Gospel from Peter and Paul and eventually became their successor as Rock and teacher of the nations. He led the Church to remain true and firm in faith in God during the ferocious persecution not only of Nero but later, during his papacy, of Domitian. After the persecution had abated, he wrote a letter to the Church of Corinth, which had deposed their priests because the priests were challenging them to follow the Lamb in ways they didn’t want. In the first exercise of papal primacy by the bishop of Rome in interaction with a Church outside of Rome, he wrote a letter to the Corinthians telling them they needed to take back their priests, which they did. Eventually St. Clement was sent into exile and died a martyr, a genuine witness to his living in Christ’s kingdom always.
• The third example is St. Columban, a Celtic monk and abbot in the sixth and seven centuries who called people, by his example and his words, to total commitment to God and focus on his kingdom. Even though he had a beautiful life in the monastery, he left it to try to reevangelize Europe, starting from France. Along the way initiated the practice of individual auricular confession after centuries where confession happened in public before the Bishop and the Church. He and his monastic missionaries also attracted multitudes through their prayer, community life, study and sober work. Pope Benedict focused on St. Columban’s courage in facing persecution from both the Church and state in helping people overcome spiritual compromises in a Catechesis about him back in 2008. He said, “Columban introduced Confession and private and frequent penance on the Continent. It was known as ‘tariffed’ penance because of the proportion established between the gravity of the sin and the type of penance imposed by the confessor. These innovations roused the suspicion of local Bishops, a suspicion that became hostile when Columban had the courage to rebuke them openly for the practices of some of them. … Intransigent as he was in every moral matter, Columban then came into conflict with the royal house for having harshly reprimanded King Theuderic for his adulterous relations. This created a whole network of personal, religious and political intrigues and manoeuvres which, in 610, culminated in a Decree of expulsion banishing Columban and all the monks of Irish origin from Luxeuil and condemning them to definitive exile. But that was a witness too.” He proclaimed the indestructible kingdom of Christ even when earthly kingdoms tried to extinguish the message and messengers.
• Today we come to Mass to build ourselves anew on Christ the cornerstone. We come to allow him to make us strong not with gold, silver, bronze or iron, but with his own trust in the Father, with his own power of love, with his own body and blood, as he seeks to make us into a temple that will never be destroyed and to take us united with him to the celestial Jerusalem to rejoice with him, with Miguel, Clement, Columban and all the saints.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel Lk 21:5-11

While some people were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
Jesus said, “All that you see here–
the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”

Then they asked him,
“Teacher, when will this happen?
And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?”
He answered,
“See that you not be deceived,
for many will come in my name, saying,
‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’
Do not follow them!
When you hear of wars and insurrections,
do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,
but it will not immediately be the end.”
Then he said to them,
“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues
from place to place;
and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.”

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